


A Touch of Yin, A Taste of Yang

by DesireeArmfeldt



Category: due South
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Gift Fic, Hotel Sex, One Night Stands, POV Female Character, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:24:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesireeArmfeldt/pseuds/DesireeArmfeldt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stella has learned to manage her attraction to criminal types so that nobody gets hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Touch of Yin, A Taste of Yang

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Heather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/gifts).



> Thanks to Butterfly_Ghost and Sock_Marionette for beta.

Something Stella has learned about herself in the years since her divorce: she has a type, and unfortunately, it’s the criminal type.

It was Ray’s bad-boy side that attracted her to him in the first place.  The cigarettes, the tattoo, the spiked hair, the South Side accent, the motorcycle, the tough-guy swagger backed up by real fist-fights after school.  The drinking and the fast driving and the bad language.  If he’d stayed a scrawny, geeky boy with oversized glasses and a sweet smile, she would have forgotten him before the end of ninth grade.

Of course the thing that made her stick with Ray, the thing that made them _work_ together for so many years, was the fact that at his core, Ray was a good man.  Not a good boy: not a homework-finisher or a speed-limit-obeyer or a teller-of-the-truth-to-his-parents.  But Ray was, fundamentally, on the side of the angels, just like Stella herself.  On the side of justice.  A good cop, the kind who cared about getting it done right, who’d bust his ass and break his heart trying to help people get a fair shake.

Not a bad boy at all.

He yelled it at her once during the bad days, the all-over-but-the-paperwork days.  _You only married me so you could clean me up, but it was the dirty me you fell in love with.  Just tell me which I’m supposed to be._

And he was right.  What she needs in a husband is dependability, honesty, uprightness.  The problem is, those aren’t the qualities that attract her in a lover.  She respects and admires upright people.  They’re the ones she seeks out as coworkers and political allies.  But she doesn’t fall in love with them.  Or _stay_ in love with them.

No; she falls in love with manipulative, clever, genuinely dangerous bad-boys (and bad-girls).   Frank Orsini was the first, but not the last.  Fortunately, she’s wised up since Frank.  Now that she understands her own weakness, she’s on the alert, and she'll be damned if she lets herself be fooled that way again.  She approaches potential lovers like defendants now, assuming that the first story they tell is unlikely to be the truth, the whole truth, or nothing but the truth.

Sometimes she takes up with them anyway.  Not for long, of course.  Stella is, after all, on the side of the angels.  The last thing she wants is to get entangled with someone else’s criminal activity, or to be in the position of having to choose between betraying a lover and betraying the justice system.  But as long as she doesn’t ask _too_ many questions, doesn’t look _too_ carefully, and says a friendly goodbye before things get complicated. . .she can have a good time, while it lasts.

As for marriage, she’s made peace with the fact that that’s not going to happen again.  If it didn’t work with Ray, it’s not going to work with anyone else.  She briefly thought of trying with Ray Vecchio.  In fact, she thought seriously enough about it to move with him to Florida and help him set up his bowling alley.  But by the time she’d passed the Florida bar exam, the passion was gone and she’d come to her senses.  Ray was a good man, one she’d happily have as a colleague or a friend.  But more than that. . .there was just no point.

She liked Florida well enough to stay, though.  Which is why she finds herself in a Miami courtroom this morning, defending a smart, sensuous, dangerous woman who is almost certainly innocent of the crime she’s on trial for, but just as surely has some dark secrets in her past that Stella probably doesn’t want to know too much about. 

 

 

                                    *                                    *                                    *

 

 _It’s not my real name,_ her client told her at their first meeting, after a certain amount of verbal fencing.  _I have a forged driver’s license, but I didn’t kill Jeremy.  He tried to rape me, I knocked him down, I ran.  That’s the last I saw of him._

 _I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth,_ Stella told her, which is what you always say to that kind of client. 

‘Marianne Lagrange’ just laughed.

_Really?  You’ll let them convict me for a murder I didn’t commit?_

With a private client, Stella might have told her to find another attorney, but this woman was scraping by with a part-time bartending gig and Stella was her court-appointed counsel.  Also, Stella was already pretty sure that she hadn’t actually killed the man.  And. . .Stella kind of liked her guts.  And her laugh.

Not enough to set herself up for disaster, though.

 _Convince me,_ she said.

 _If my ex finds me. . .I’d be better off in prison._   The laughter was gone and the bravado was suddenly a brittle mask.  If there was one thing Stella was good at recognizing, it was the signs of genuine trauma and fear.  Of course, just because Marianne had been hurt didn’t mean she wasn’t also hiding more than just her name.  Or that she wasn't playing on Stella’s sympathies.

 _I meant about the murder,_ Stella said, but they both knew she meant more than that.

Marianne’s story of her relationship with the deceased and her movements on the night of the murder was, in fact, convincing, and probably confirmable.  It was pretty clear that the police had mostly arrested her for lack of any more plausible suspect.

_I didn’t kill him and I didn’t have anything to do with it, either.  The worst I did to that bastard was knee him in the nuts._

As for the fake ID, the police hadn’t caught it, which just meant it was a good one.  But they must also have come up empty on matches for ‘Marianne’s’ fingerprints, which meant she didn’t have a record or any outstanding warrants against her. . .in Florida, anyway.  They wouldn’t necessarily have had any reason to go digging for out-of-state records.  Or maybe they had, and there wasn’t anything to find.

Anyway, if Stella was uncomfortable with the idea of defending someone who’d committed crimes in the past, she should have stayed a prosecutor.  Marianne was innocent of _this_ crime, and she needed Stella’s help.

And Stella liked her.

_Okay, here's the deal.  You tell me everything I need to know for this case.  You answer all my questions truthfully, no playing games.  If your answer is “don't ask me about that,” I won't ask.  But you’re taking your chances, because if the prosecution blindsides us with something I didn’t know about, I may not be able to do anything about it.  And if I find out you've lied to me about anything, I will go to the police._

_And if I don’t like the deal?_ Marianne asked.

_Find yourself another attorney._

Marianne gave her a slow smile that had too many layers of meaning to read: rueful and amused and pleased and angry and yes, a little dangerous, but with some respect in there, too.

 _I could get to like you,_ said Marianne as she held out her hand to shake on it.

 

 

                                    *                                    *                                    *

 

 

Fortunately, the evidence corroborating ‘Marianne’s’ story is more than enough to convince a jury.  Also fortunately, the prosecutor isn’t all that interested in a conviction against a woman who fairly obviously did not actually murder a drug dealer with no family or powerful connections.  He’s just going through the motions and hasn’t bothered to dig too deeply. 

Marianne’s good on the stand, too, hitting just the right combination of middle-class-woman-fallen-on-hard-times-but-struggling-to-better-herself and brave-beautiful-victim guaranteed to win the jury’s sympathy.  Which is just what Stella coached her to do (hating herself a little and the system a lot, like she does every time she tells a female client how to perform in court).  Stella suspects Marianne didn’t need prompting, though.  It’s unsettling how naturally she plays the part, and how easily she sheds it when she and Stella are alone.  Her tragic eyes are so compelling that even Stella isn’t immune to the effect, even though she _knows_ Marianne can turn them on and off at will.  A little creepy, but a damn useful trick for the courtroom.

So, with careful work but not too much of a struggle as these things go, Stella gets acquittal for Marianne, who thanks her warmly when it’s over and offers to buy her a drink.

“That’s all right now, isn’t it?  Since I’m not your client any more?”  Her tone is casual, but the subtext is clear from the way her deepset eyes linger on Stella’s mouth before slowly meeting hers.  A tingle starts up between Stella’s legs; a spark of possibility.

 “Sure,” she says, letting the tip of her tongue moisten her lower lip briefly.  “Why not?”

 

 

                                    *                                    *                                    *

 

 

One drink turns into two; two turn into Stella wondering aloud about dinner.  Marianne shrugs, her wide lips curving in an easy, generous smile that makes Stella feel overheated.

“Or we could just have some horrible nachos and then go. . .somewhere else.”  Marianne licks some salt off the rim of her glass in a parody of bad-movie seduction.

Stella laughs.  Marianne grins back at her, eyebrows raised mischievously.

“Deal,” Stella says.

“I like your laugh,” says Marianne softly once the bartender’s taken their order.  She leans in a little so Stella can hear her over the noise of the TV and chatter around them.  Her loose, dark curls brush Stella’s cheek and shoulder.  “You should laugh more.”

“I do,” Stella tells her.  “Just not on the job, so much.”

“You don’t find it all kind of absurd sometimes?  All those stuffed-shirted men, all those rules, everyone pretending to take the whole game so fucking seriously?”

“It may be a game, but people’s lives are at stake,” says Stella.  “I don’t think that’s a joke.”

Marianne tilts her head to one side, considering.

“I really am grateful for what you did for me,” she says.  “But you would have done the same if you thought I’d killed him, wouldn’t you?”

“I do my best for my clients,” says Stella.  “But I advise them against outright lying in court.  It’s not a good idea.”

“And you don’t like it.”

Stella shrugs.  Marianne gives her another one of those implausibly bright, girlish smiles.

Then she leans in again, even closer this time, so that her lips brush Stella’s ear as she murmurs, “Lucky for you I have kind of a thing for honest people.”

 

 

                                    *                                    *                                    *

 

The nachos aren’t all that bad, as it turns out.  Eating them quickly devolves into a bad-porn-imitation contest, all pointing tongues and fluttering eyelashes and licking fingers and cracking each other up to the point where it’s a miracle they don’t end up flinging food all over themselves and the bar.  They manage not to make _too_ much of a spectacle of themselves, but Stella can’t remember the last time she laughed like this. 

She picks up the tab and leaves a generous tip for the bartender, and they head out with their arms ostentatiously around each other’s waists, giggling and stumbling like drunks (though they’re sober, mostly).

“Your place?” Marianne murmurs in her ear, fingers roaming over Stella’s hip.  But no, Stella’s not distracted enough to be that careless.

“How about yours?” she counters.

Marianne pulls away to look at her with a frown that quickly transforms into a theatrical pout.

“Don’t trust me, huh?”

Stella shrugs.  If it’s going to be a problem, just as well to have it out here in the parking lot, in public.

“I have a thing for dishonest people,” she says.

Marianne’s wide mouth twists into an ugly shape for a moment.  Then she laughs and shrugs, which makes her teal blouse ripple over her breasts.

“There’s a motel a couple blocks thataway.  Wouldn’t even have to drive.”

“Sounds perfect,” Stella says.

 

 

                                    *                                    *                                    *

 

 

Marianne shuts the door behind them, then holds out her hands to help Stella out of her blazer.  Stella plays along with the mock-chivalry, amused and a little self-conscious, wondering how many times she’s let a man take her coat, open a door, fetch her a drink.  Marianne catches her eye, gives her a sharp smile, and tosses the jacket deliberately over her shoulder.  Stella can’t quite stifle her reflexive twitch and frown as it hits the floor, which makes Marianne’s grin widen. 

Smiling right back at her, Stella kicks off first one shoe, then the other, sending them flying into separate corners of the cramped room.  Marianne laughs delightedly and gives her a wink.

Stella puts on a little swagger as she stalks, stocking-footed, towards Marianne, who backs up, grinning, until she’s forced to sit back on the edge of the bed.  She stretches one long leg up towards Stella, so Stella makes like Prince Charming, removing Marianne’s shoe and then delicately stroking the arch of her foot with one finger.  The other shoe goes the same way.  Marianne brings her feet down and Stella is left standing between her knees.  Marianne tilts her face up, her eyebrows raised and the tip of her tongue wetting her lower lip. 

They take it slow at first.  Touching and teasing, stroking each other’s hair, shoulderblades, wrists.  Both of them trying to hide the sound of their quickening breath.

Stella runs her index finger delicately down the line of buttons fastening Marianne’s blouse.  Marianne gives her a long look that Stella can’t quite read.  Then she grabs her blouse in both hands and yanks it open with a tearing noise; at least one button goes flying.  She stares challenge into Stella’s eyes, daring her to flinch.  Stella just leans in, buries both hands in Marianne’s hair, and pulls her into a kiss.

And that’s the end of slow and gentle.  A couple of seconds later, she’s pinned to the bed with Marianne on top of her, both of them twisting and rolling and grabbing at each other’s clothes, kissing and licking and biting any skin that happens to come within reach.  Marianne takes just enough care to leave Stella’s clothes undamaged as she strips her.  She’s less careful with Stella’s skin: her long nails leave marks that sting just a little; her mouth sucks hard enough above Stella’s breast to leave a hickey.  Stella takes the cue and gives back as good as she gets.  When she presses her nails into Marianne’s soft ass, Marianne hisses with pleasure and grinds her hips down against Stella’s.

 _All right, then._   Stella’s good with rough, under the right circumstances.  These would appear to be the right circumstances.  She’s tingling all over now, all her circuits lit up, hot and eager as she rolls Marianne under her, taking the upper hand for a moment.  Marianne’s a little bigger than Stella; maybe a little stronger.  But the difference is nothing compared to being with a man, and Marianne isn’t really out to win this wrestling match.  The struggle is the point.  So Stella gives her something to struggle against.

Marianne’s mouth is just as kissable as it looks: mobile, strong and eager.  Her delicate hands turn out to be stronger than they look, and very capable.  Her thick curls make a tent to kiss under when she’s the one on top.  Stella keeps twining her hands through that hair, loving the feel of it.  It’s the kind of hair she used to wish she had, as a teenager, although if her hair actually did grow so thick and wild she’d have to wear it short, since masses of tangled curls are not suitable business attire.  It’s beautiful on Marianne, though, tumbling over her bare shoulders, making her look like some fantasy novel book jacket's idea of a wood nymph.

Stella reaches up to cup Marianne’s breasts, which are just a little larger than her own.  They fill Stella’s small hands satisfyingly.  She raises her head to lick, then suck Marianne’s nipple.

“More,” whispers Marianne.  It’s the first word either of them has spoken since the shoes came off.

Stella sucks harder.  Marianne closes her eyes and tips her head back, pressing her breast against Stella’s lips.

“More,” she repeats, so Stella starts using her teeth, just lightly at first, then delicately increasing the pressure as Marianne’s gasps turns to groans and her arms, holding her up over Stella, start to tremble.

Stella slides a hand down Marianne’s belly, over her pubic curls.  Crooks her middle finger, presses it into the warm, wet opening.  Marianne makes a noise that sounds enough like pain to make Stella into glance up at her in concern.  She can’t see Marianne’s face, though; her head’s tilted back so that all Stella can see from this angle is her throat.

“All right?” Stella whispers.

“Don’t fucking stop,” hisses Marianne. 

But before Stella can go back to what she was doing, Marianne drops down beside her, pulls her close and kisses her savagely.  _Too_ rough: Stella’s lip gets mashed against her teeth.  She pulls back with a noise of protest, but Marianne won’t let her go.  For a second, Stella wonders if this is about to turn ugly after all, and whether she could get at her purse for the pepper spray if she had to.  But when Marianne’s lips touch hers again, the kiss is soft and tender, and Marianne’s hands relax their grip, just resting on Stella’s skin, now, not restraining her.

“Please,” Marianne whispers, barely removing her lips from Stella’s.

“Easy,” Stella warns, and Marianne answers, “Yes.  _Please._ ”

Stella moves her hand between Marianne’s legs again, but this time Marianne’s doing the same to her.  And Marianne’s fingers are gentle, so gentle, teasing her clit, stroking between her folds, dipping into her vagina now and then, until Stella wants to shake her to make her give _more, faster, now._

She makes an impatient groaning, growling noise in her throat.  Marianne’s answering smile is bright with challenge.

Well, Stella always did have a competitive streak.  So she lies back and struggles to keep her breath steady as she lets Marianne set the pace.  She keeps her own touch just as light and slow until Marianne gives another one of those strangled moans that sounds like she’s hurting.

Stella lifts herself up on her elbow, dislodging both their hands, and looks down at Marianne, who is pressing her head back against the pillow with her eyes screwed shut, breathing fast through clenched teeth.

“Hey,” says Stella softly.  “It’s all right.”  She strokes Marianne’s belly tenderly, wondering what the hell’s going on, here.

“Not really,” whispers Marianne, so softly Stella’s not sure she’s heard right.  Then Marianne captures her hand and tugs it down to her crotch.  The _please_ is silent this time; just the press down of Marianne’s hand and the press up of her hips.

“All right,” Stella murmurs as she starts to rub.  “It’s all right.”

She doesn’t tease, this time.  Her fingers make slow, steady circles until Marianne starts to moan and tilt her hips rhythmically.  Stella picks up the pace gradually and watches Marianne’s fists clench and her body arch tight.  For what seems like a long time, they hang there, Marianne straining and trembling, her breath harsh and fast; Stella watching, varying the speed and placement of her fingers, trying to find just the right touch to break the stasis.

 _There._   Marianne cries out and collapses onto the bed like she’s been shot.  The next moment, she wraps her arms and legs around Stella, hugging her close, rocking against her.  If Stella were a man, this would be her cue to slip inside Marianne—and damn, she almost wishes she _were_ a man, just for that.

Instead, she holds Marianne close and rubs against her.  Marianne snakes one hand down between them, still clutching Stella tight, and starts to stroke her clit.  Firmly now, no fooling around, but not roughly.  Just right, perfect speed, perfect pressure, and Stella sighs into Marianne’s shoulder as the pleasure tightens inside her.

“Yes, oh, yes,” she whispers, and Marianne kisses her, sliding her tongue into Stella’s mouth, stealing her breath, drinking her moans as she crests and comes.

For a little while they lie there, still tangled together as closely as they can be, as the air conditioning starts to chill their damp skin.  It’s deeply comforting, which makes Stella’s throat hurt, because she hadn’t realized how much she misses holding someone like this.  It’s more than just that, though.  It’s the way Marianne’s clinging to her, the longing and need in that _please_ , the intensity of the emotion leaking out of her. . .All the stuff that nearly suffocated her, when she was with Ray, and she knows she did the right thing getting away from someone who didn’t understand the concept of distance.  But apparently it’s like quitting smoking: you’re better off without it, but the cravings don’t entirely fade.

Anyway, Marianne isn’t in love with Stella, which is just as well.  _A frog may love a pig, but where would they build a house?_   They’ve scratched each other’s itches, and that’s the end of it.  In fact, Marianne is already getting up and collecting her scattered clothes.

“No, take it easy,” she says when Stella makes to get up herself.  “It’s better if. . .”

“I suppose so,” Stella agrees.

She watches Marianne reassemble herself.  The teal blouse is ripped; not horribly, but enough to be noticed on the street.

“Here, take mine,” Stella fishes her cream silk shirt up from the floor.  “I’ve got a jacket, it won’t show.”

Marianne gives her a look that’s both amused and wistful, with maybe a hint of something darker underneath.

“You sure?”

“Sure.”  Stella nods.  “It’s only a couple of blocks to my car anyway.”

“Mine, too,” says Marianne, but she drops her own blouse on the bed and puts on Stella’s.  It’s a little tight across the shoulders and it gaps between the middle buttons, but at least she doesn’t look like she’s been in a fight.  She puts on her shoes, shakes her wood-nymph curls over her shoulders, and picks up her purse.

“Thanks for everything,” she says.  Her mouth smiles mockingly, but Stella thinks she probably does mean it.

“Take care of yourself,” Stella tells her.

“Oh, I do,” Marianne laughs, and then she’s out the door.

 

 

                                    *                                    *                                    *

 

 

Several weeks later, Stella gets a postcard with a print of a Georgia O’Keefe orchid.  It’s addressed to her at her office and postmarked Las Vegas.  The message, in block-print, reads:

_BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T ASK._

It’s signed, in vaguely-familiar handwriting, “Victoria.”

No last name, of course.  That would, after all, be telling.

She considers calling Ray Vecchio, who has friends in the Miami PD (cops like to bowl with ex-cops) and friends in the FBI.  Or Ray Kowalski, who is still a cop himself, in Chicago.  Either of them would do a little discreet digging for her, if she asked. 

She sticks the card in her purse, and doesn’t call anyone. 

When she gets home, she puts it in the drawer of the nightstand, where it stays for a long time.  She never takes it out to look at it, but she does think about Victoria sometimes, when she’s falling asleep alone.  She likes to imagine her sleeping in someone’s arms.  The _someone_ is always vague in Stella’s mind, just a person-shaped placeholder.  It’s Victoria’s smile Stella thinks about: a sleepy, unguarded smile.  Not one Stella ever saw in real life.  The smile, and the way Victoria’s body is completely relaxed, just one hand curled a little around someone else’s hand.

She suspects it’s unlikely to ever happen, but it makes a nice fantasy. 


End file.
